From the North Shore to Hollywood for Dan George
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, we are counting down to Canada Day with profiles of 150 noteworthy British Columbians
On July 1, 1967, Chief Dan George was invited to speak at a giant celebration at Empire Stadium marking the 100th anniversary of Confederation.
He stunned the crowd of 32,000 with a lament for the loss of the native way of life across Canada.
“In the long hundred years since the white man came, I have seen my freedom disappear like the salmon going mysteriously out to sea,” said George.
“The white man’s strange customs, which I could not understand, pressed down upon me until I could no longer breathe.
“When I fought to protect my land and my home, I was called a savage. When I neither understood nor welcomed his way of life, I was called lazy. When I tried to rule my people, I was stripped of my authority.
“My nation was ignored in your history textbooks — they were little more important in the history of Canada than the buffalo that ranged the plains.
“I was ridiculed in your plays and motion pictures, and when I drank your firewater, I got drunk — very, very drunk.
“Oh Canada, how can I celebrate with you this centenary, this hundred years? Shall I thank you for the reserves that are left to me of my beautiful forests? For the canned fish of my rivers? For the loss of my pride and authority, even among my own people? For the lack of my will to fight back?”
Ironically, George was no longer chief of the Burrard Indian band when he made the speech — he had been voted out of office four years earlier. (The band is now known as the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.)
But he wasn’t surprised he was voted out, because he had admitted he was too busy as an actor to pay attention to the community’s concerns.
His acting career began in 1960 when he landed a role in the CBC-TV series Cariboo Country.
He starred onstage in The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, but really made his mark in the 1970 Hollywood movie Little Big Man.
He was born in North Vancouver on July 24, 1899, and only spoke the Tsleil-Waututh’s native dialect until he was sent to a residential school, where he learned English.
In his childhood, his family resided in an 80-foot-long, split-cedar “smoke house” that belonged to his grandfather, and lived by hunting and fishing.
But the modern world encroached as Vancouver grew, and for most of his working life George was a logger and longshoreman.
He died on Sept. 23, 1981, at age 92.